Friday, December 23, 2011

Coconut Casino Explained

Since I've been farming cracked alloys, I inevitably had to decide whether I want to risk money into the coconut slot machines. But eh, 5 bars is a lot to give up (could set me back a full day) so I thought I might as well do an analysis.

First of all, this thing is definitely a scam, but some scams are actually worse than others. This is the board:

You put bets into each food item and they'll roll randomly, and if you land on a food square, it will give you back the number * the amount you bet.

i.e. you put 10 into clover and you land on clover, it'll pay out 10 * 100 = 1000 coins. You can bet max 10 in any food item, up to 10 in each for a full bet of 80 (and if it lands on any food item, you get 10 * the food's payout).

If you land on !, then you either lose (and get nothing), or you get a free spin. This is random.

If you land on ?, then you get a payout of 0, 1, 10 or 100 coins, again random.

First of all, the fundamental scam is this, you trade gold for coconut coins, which isn't worth shit unless you open a perm, but mostly you'll be getting saphaels.

Second of all, this actually operates on two fallacies that makes people with a lot of gold (or just really impatient) lose more money.

Fallacy #1: Betting 10 coins in any one food item is the same as betting 1 in that food item 10 times.
Fallacy #2: Betting 1 coin each in two food items is the same as betting 1 in one food item, then betting 1 in the other.

To understand why this is, we must first understand how much of a payout that ? square is.